The First Prince of Wales by Edith Nesbit — Read

THERE were Welsh princes long before there were English kings, and the Welsh princes could not bear to be subject to the kings of England. So they were always fighting to get back their independence. But the English kings could not let them be free as they wished, because England could never have been safe with an independent kingdom so close to her. So there were constant wars between the two countries, and sometimes the fortune of battle went one way and sometimes the other.

But at last the Welsh Prince Llewellyn was killed. He had gone to the south of Wales to cheer up his subjects there, and he had crossed the river Wye into England, when a small band of English knights came up. A young knight named Adam Frankton met with a Welsh chief as he came out of a barn to join the Welsh army. Frankton at once attacked him, and after a struggle, wounded the Welsh chief to death. Then he rode on to battle, and when he came back he tried to find out what had become of the Welshman. He heard that he was already dead, and then they found that the dead man was the great Welsh Prince Llewellyn. His head was taken off and sent to London, where it was placed on the battlements of the Tower and crowned, in scorn, with ivy. This was because an old Welsh magician, years before, had said that when English money became round, the Welsh princes should be crowned in London. And money had become round in this way: --